You might have missed it amid the Benghazi thundering on Fox and the airplane searching on CNN. But a Commonwealth Court judge has denied a request that he reconsider his earlier ruling that struck down Pennsylvania’s 2012 Voter ID law.

Judge Bernard L. McGinley initially torpedoed the law in January. Last Monday, he issued another decision shrugging off Gov. Tom Corbett’s insistence that he revisit the case. McGinley said the law did not “provide liberal access to compliant photo ID” and deprived “numerous electors of their fundamental right to vote, so vital to our democracy.”

Well, of course it does. That was the point. GOP officials and lawmakers have openly admitted that the main reason the law was passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature was to make it easier for Republicans to win elections.

Let’s think about how.

In the first place, as observers noted immediately after Corbett signed the law, having to produce an ID to vote fundamentally changes the nature of voting. What was once a welcoming, participatory process suddenly becomes an adversarial, exclusionary transaction fraught with suspicion. Right or wrong, that alone might be enough to keep people away from polling places.

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Far more likely is that those who really want to show up will do so, and produce their ID to a poll worker they’ve known for decades. Except, you know, those who don’t have approved IDs. Those people would be given a provisional ballot that wouldn’t count unless they made an extra effort after the election at a different location to prove their identity. Many might jump those extra hurdles, and many might not.

We shouldn’t be in the business of erecting barriers to voting in front of anyone. But it also happens that the people who would most likely be affected by voter ID laws are African American, Hispanic, elders who no longer drive, college students, and more generally people of lower academic attainment of all ethnicities and backgrounds. As voting blocs most of those groups lean toward Democrats.

The state, by the way, could not show the court one case in which someone tried to vote in Pennsylvania while using someone else’s identity. Not one. It proved a point made here many times -- the Voter ID law was a solution in search of a problem.

The overall effect is that voter ID laws reduce turnout, and consensus of those who have studied the matter is that turnout suppression hovers about 2 to 3 percent. Which seems small, until you realize that statewide elections involve millions of registered voters. The legitimacy of an election as an expression of the will of the people hinges most on voter turnout, and we shouldn’t be doing anything to actively reduce it.

So McGinley should be applauded for taking a stand. He’s not the only one, either. A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a similar law in Wisconsin, noting the twin troubles that also played roles in McGinley’s decision: The disenfranchisement of voters and the sheer impossibility of proving that voter impersonation is a problem. Because it isn’t. It’s the unicorn of voter fraud, due to its absurdly small risk-to-reward ratio. It’s also the only form of voting fraud that voter ID laws can prevent.

Corbett, a Republican who’s in his own tough race for re-electin this year, has decided not to appeal the judge’s order. He still defends the dubious statute and vowed to work with the Legislature to craft one that can withstand court scrutiny. He should give it up and try to solve some real problems in the state. Reforming the way we fund public education would be a good start.